Dr. Allen: Dr. Gaines, it is a joy to host you on the campus of Midwestern Seminary and to visit with you here in the Spurgeon Room. We are surrounded by Spurgeon’s books and artifacts talking about topics that are dear to you, dear to me, and, indeed, dear to Charles Spurgeon himself. I want to talk to you today about prayer, especially prayer in the life of the minister and prayer in the life of the man of God. I know from conversations with you over the years and especially emphases in your ministry and from your pulpit, this is a topic that is dear to you. Let me broadly open this up with a word of greeting to you. Welcome! When we talk about prayer, what comes to mind?

Dr. Gaines: I think what comes to mind for me is that the Lord Jesus himself is the only expert on prayer. When you look at his life and ministry, he was obviously God in the flesh, and at the same time, he put a high premium on prayer. How do you explain that? I do not know, except he knew that communication with the Father was imperative. Obviously, he was God in the flesh but at the same time—it is really interesting to me—he prayed so much.

The Bible says that at his baptism he prayed, and in Luke’s gospel he prayed and the heavens were opened. I love that. One of the ways you open heaven is to pray. The heavens were opened and the Spirit of God came down upon him. What did he do right after his baptism? He went into the wilderness for 40 days of prayer and fasting. When he came out of the wilderness, he had the anointing of the Spirit, and it said he came out in the power of the Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he prayed, and he came under temptation, but through prayer, fasting, and knowing and quoting the Scripture—which is the only protection any of us have with the same type of temptation—he was victorious.

Then, the Bible said in Mark 1 that in the early morning, after a very busy day and night before, while it was still dark (verse 35) he went out and departed to a lonely place and was in prayer. The language suggests that it was a protracted time of prayer in the morning. The Bible says later in Luke 5:16, he would often slip away into the wilderness and pray. When he fed the 5,000, he took the little boy’s lunch and he blessed it—he prayed over it—and there was an abundance. Jesus prayed constantly.

If you think about it, he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is really interesting that Judas knew exactly where to find him because it says in John’s Gospel that he frequently went to that place; and I am assuming, not just to meet, but to pray. He prayed fervently. That word is only used a couple of times in the Bible about prayer, but it is Luke’s Gospel again, in 22:44, it says he prayed fervently and his sweat was like great drops of blood falling to the ground. It was very intense prayer.

Then, the writer of Hebrews comments that he prayed with loud cries and tears, and he was heard because of his piety. He prayed on the cross too. Of the statements we have of Jesus, several of them are prayer. He prayed, “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” Then he prayed Scripture at least twice out of the Psalms. He prayed Scripture when he prayed Psalm 22:1, which is all prophetic text about the crucifixion—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I believe that he probably prayed more of that because, again, one of the most vivid descriptions of the cross is Psalm 22. I have often said, “You would never have the shepherd of Psalm 23, if you had not had the savior dying for us in Psalm 22. Jesus prayed that on the cross. Then he prayed Psalms also when he said, “In your hands I commit my Spirit.” So, Jesus prayed.

Even in his resurrected state at Emmaus, our Lord would not put a morsel of bread in his resurrected mouth before he prayed over it. Then, Hebrews says in chapter 7 that he is the one mediator between God and men. Paul says it in 1 Timothy 2:5, but in Hebrews it says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for those who draw near to God through him.” I believe Jesus is praying right now. One of the most encouraging things I know of is that Jesus prays for his children.

I say all of that not to just give a lot of information. But if the Son of God, while he was on this earth, needed to pray, how much more do we need to pray? The early church—I am convinced of this, Dr. Allen—the reason they had the power they did was not just because of an age. I hear about the “Age of Miracles” and the “Day of Miracles.” I think there is a God of miracles. Some people say that the problem with the church today, the lethargy, the lack of power, the impotence is because we do not preach the pure gospel. We do not sing the right songs. I do not think it is the songs or the sermon. I really don’t. I think we basically preach that Christ was born of a virgin. Most evangelicals believe all of that. They believe that Jesus died an atoning, sacrificial death. Some believe he died only for the elect; some believe he died for everybody. I believe he died for everybody. He was raised bodily from the dead. We preach the basic gospel, and we call people to repentance and faith in Christ and that they need to call upon the name of the Lord. I think the sermons are the same and basically the songs are. Paul said to sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart. I think we do that now. To me, the reason we do not see the movement of God is because we do not pray like they prayed. We depend on a lot of other things, and we get connected with people. I like to say it this way. We get horizontal, but we do not know how to get vertical.

Dr. Allen: That is good. Let me prod you a bit, put you on the spot and ask you to be autobiographical. I hear an intense belief in prayer and passion for prayer. That is not just something you are saying to me today, that is something that has characterized your ministry. Rewind the clock. Has this been an incremental appreciation for prayer that has developed year-by-year, or was there a certain moment in your ministry where the Lord took you to a new level of intensity? Take us into your “prayer closet,” so to speak.

Dr. Gaines: There have been several times that the Lord has just moved sovereignly in my life in the area of prayer. When I was in college at Union University, well, going all the way back to UT Martin—where I really started living for the Lord—I really believe that God put me with some prayer warriors. You know, I want to go just a second, if I can, even beyond that.

The reason that I became a Christian is because my mother was in a hospital less than 100 miles from here—in St. Joseph, Mo. There was some procedure they were having back then. She was 24 years old. That was way back—just after World War II. She was having her breast removed because she had cancer. They had removed one—my mother was not a Christian—and they were about to remove the other and a little Baptist lady who had had a double mastectomy herself got up in the hospital bed of my mother, put my mother’s head in her lap, and prayed for her all night long that God would heal her. They came in the next day in St. Joseph, Mo. and the cancer was gone. When my mother came out from under sedation, the lady led her to Christ and said, “You go back to Central City, Ky.,” which is where she lived with my dad. She said, “You find a good Baptist church, and you get baptized. Tell your preacher what happened.” If it wasn’t for some praying woman—who I am looking forward to meeting someday—that just called out to God for my mother, that is how we got into church. Her dad knew she got saved; my dad got saved; we grew up in a Baptist church and that is how I got saved. My parents led me to Christ because that lady led her to Christ. So, I have always believed in Christ.

When I went to college at UT Martin, I got turned on to the Lord in the FCA there with a bunch of praying guys. I went to Union with George Guthery. I played high school ball with George. He was a quarterback, and I was a lineman. We prayed all the time. We memorized Scripture; we read the Bible; we would go soul-winning; but we prayed.

Then, when I went to Southwestern Seminary one of the first guys I met was a guy named Jack Taylor who was a famous guy who had written a book called Prayer, Life’s Limitless Reach that changed my life. He introduced me to a guy who was preaching at Southcliff Baptist Church named Don Miller. Don Miller has probably taught me more about prayer than anybody else. Don is out of Fort Worth, with Bible Based Prayer Ministries, and is a great guy. I have had him at every church I’ve been at.

But all through my life, I have just known that prayer is the secret to it all. I have always said I love to preach, but I have asked the Lord for years to get me to the point where I would really rather pray than preach. I think that what happens is that we cannot just talk for the Lord before we talk with the Lord. I say “with,” not “to” because God speaks to us. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” Deuteronomy 13:4 says, “You will hear my voice.” Isaiah said, “You will hear my voice behind you saying this is the way whenever you turn to the right or the left.” I believe God speaks to us through the Word, through impressions, through the Holy Spirit, but the more we talk with the Lord, the more the Lord talks with us. I think what we are missing, Dr. Allen, is a passionate desire to pray.

I will say this and then let you ask me any question you want. I do not want to put a bunch of guilt on anybody. I think the reason people do not pray—they want to pray, everybody believes in prayer—they do not know how. They do not know how to keep a sustained conversation with the Lord going. We have all been in that awkward moment when you are trying to talk to somebody, and you just run out of things to say. It is awkward. It is really awkward when that person is the Lord. They say, “Lord, you saved me; I’m on my way to heaven; you forgave me and all; and I do not even know how to talk to you more than 10 minutes.” I’m telling you, most people do not know what to pray. I think the ultimate answer is to study what Jesus taught on prayer, specifically in what I believe was a good rabbinical document that he gave in a rabbinical way—the Lord’s Prayer. It downloads a pattern for you to follow. I do not think Jesus just wanted us to mouth those words before a football game or whatever. I think that God wants us to look at that and look at the praise at the beginning, the surrender of the will, the asking for forgiveness, the intercession, the petition, and the spiritual warfare. All that is in there is amazing. It is a pattern. I have used that over the years in my prayer life, and it has changed my life.

Dr. Allen: That is encouraging to hear. I have incorporated—many years ago and most recently today—a method of praying through Scripture and praying through Psalms. Not only routinely in some trite way, but engaging God’s Word to fuel, channel, and inform those prayers. For someone like me and you, who have full plates in life, it is easy for our minds to race to our to-do list, the phone calls we need to return, and the issues we need to engage. But having God’s Word there to bind my heart minute-after-minute to it and to inform those prayers has been so very helpful to me.

Let me shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about the man of God, or we hope, a generation of men of God that we are training here at the seminary. I preached a sermon several months back and wrote an article in conjunction with it called, “Where have All the Godly Men Gone?” You cannot be a godly man without being a praying man. What I want, as a seminary president, more urgently than training skilled preachers or gifted exegetes or the different skills and talents we want to see in ministry, I want people whose hearts are given to the Lord. You cannot have that unless prayer is a part of that. As I began to think about and pray through this topic, one of the things that became very clear to me is, one reason why we have fewer godly men is because we have fewer churches who actually want godly men. They want people who can tend to the youth and build a church and know the business side of it. But it seems like from the pulpit to the pew, we have fundamentally devalued godliness as a character trait that we cultivate through prayer in our preacher and in the pew. Do you share that observation, and do you see this as a present concern as well?

Dr. Gaines: I think that churches, for good or bad, usually follow the pattern of their pastor. Wherever his spiritual level is, they will never rise above that. I know you hear that a lot, but I believe that.

Dr. Allen: There is a trickle-down effect.

Dr. Gaines: Exactly, and I think that one of the temptations that pastors face as much as anything is just the busyness and the constant pressure to develop sermons, deliver sermons, lead staff, visit staff, visit sick people, lead the church, all of these things. And if you are not careful, you can get so wrapped up in the daily routine of ministry and think that it is really okay because, “I do not have to pray as much, I am doing the work of the Lord.” I am just telling you, Jesus’ example shows us that you cannot just do the work of the Lord. You have to be with the Lord.

Jesus, interestingly, when he chose his 12 disciples in Mark’s Gospel, it says, “He chose 12 that they might be with him and then that he might send them out to preach and to cast out demons.” I believe that is biblical because when I believe the first deacons came about—in Acts 6—the apostles said, “We will devote ourselves,” not to the ministering of the Word and prayer, but the order was, “prayer and the ministry of the Word.” “We will devote ourselves to prayer.” That whole phrase is in Acts 1:14. They were devoting themselves to prayer prior to the day of Pentecost.

By the way, the church was birthed in a prayer meeting, not in a preaching meeting. It was in a 10-day prayer meeting. I do not think it is wrong to say that they prayed for the vast majority of that time. Then Peter preached an hour or two hours—I do not know what he preached—but they prayed for 10 days, he preached for an hour and 3,000 got saved. You know what I am about to say. You have heard it so many times. We pray for an hour, and we preach for 10 days and we wonder why we do not have the same results. We reverse it. I think the church needs to get back with communing with God and then go out and do the ministry.

Dr. Allen: That is so good. Speaking of the church, when we think of Bellevue Baptist Church—you have been stewarding that church for nine years roughly, since the Lord called you there. When you look at the history of that church with R. G. Lee, Adrian Rogers, it is known as a church with a pulpit. You have certainly continued on that legacy—not just to flatter you—but you have. You are known as a pulpiteer as well. You also hear this parallel love and passion with prayer. I am curious as you look at a church, with a pulpit historically and presently and this prayer ministry that is built and thriving there, how have those things been integrated together? Let me just press pause on the question and explain myself further. In most churches, it is an either/or thing. A pastor is committed to preaching, enthused about preaching, and a church falls into that, they take a lot of sermon notes and become a preaching point. Then you have the churches that are more committed to prayer and that tends to be a dominating thing. But what I see and hear, and what folks that know Bellevue appreciate, is these two aspects of the ministry complementing one another so well. Tell us the feel of that and the shape of that on the ground.

Dr. Gaines: I cannot really speak for the pastors before Dr. Rogers. I did not know them. I heard Dr. Lee preach one time. I never heard Ramsey Pollard preach. They were great men, and I am sure they were great men of prayer. But I will tell you, Adrian Rogers was a man of God who walked with God and had a great devotional life. He prayed, and I think that he was very intense in wedding the two. He really had a strong devotional life. He loved, loved, loved the Lord. He is one of the sweetest people I have ever met in my life. He is one of the most Christ-like people I have ever met in my life. Adrian Rogers was one of these guys that was one-in-a-million. He was unusual. He was so kind, sweet, loving, and smart. He walked with the Lord, and he had that golden voice, yet he was very humble.

As far as me, I love to preach, but I just know that unless I pray the price—that’s what I call it—I am not just trying to log hours with the Lord to talk about it. I just know that when I not only prepare a sermon, but prepare the preacher by spending time with the Lord, as the Bible says about the early apostles, the Sanhedrin looked at them, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. I do not think it is wrong to look at that text and say, “Not only are they acting like them, but these guys have been with him.” We need to be people who have been with Jesus. I am not talking about anything like becoming a cloistered monk. I am not talking about priorities.

I’ll tell you another thing that I have done recently. I have gotten off of Facebook and Twitter. Social media was just consuming a lot of my time and it is amazing how much more time I have had to do the things I really need to do. If I do not do anything else, I need to talk with the Lord every day and praise him, worship him, and listen to him.

When is the last time you heard anybody talk about meditating on something they were reading? I know you probably do it, but pastors are not doing it. Pastors are known as busy people, and I love pastors. I have been one 30 years this year in Southern Baptist churches. I believe with all my heart that busyness is one of the most dangerous things that can kill your walk with the Lord. It can kill your marriage, and it can kill your walk with the Lord. Not that you lose your salvation, but you lose the joy as David says in Psalm 51, of his salvation that he gave you.

I believe that prayer has to be a priority. I will go out on a limb. The litmus test, in my opinion, of your Christianity, is not how many books you have read—I am all for reading; I read all the time—but I read the Bible a lot too and spend a lot of time with the Lord in prayer. I am telling you, the power is in prayer, and there is a direct correlation of power and prayer. I heard an African-American preacher say this when I was young. He said, “Little prayer, little power; some prayer, some power; lots of prayer, lots of power.” I can just tell you, in my own personal journey, that is the way it has been.

Dr. Allen: That is so very helpful. I think about my journey as you have referenced yours. When my wife and I were first entering ministry, praying through ministry, and seeking to establish ourselves in Christ in ministry, we were running the race of ministry with a few other young men. We entered ministry together and it is interesting to look back more than 15 years later. None of them scandalously flamed out. As a matter of fact, most of the people that I know who are not in ministry now, did not leave with their secretary or commit something that really scandalized the name of Christ. They just withered away. Ministry became to them not what it once was because their walk with Christ was not what it once was. Their love for the gospel diminished; their love for ministry diminished; their sense of call to ministry withered. It just dried up. When you begin to trace those things back, so very often they go back to a devotional life that went stale—a lack of prayer, a lack of Bible intake and meditation. They wake up one day and do not recognize the man they are in comparison to the man they once were.

My passion as a seminary president—I cannot ultimately program people’s hearts—is to build a culture, influence, and expectation here that we would graduate students—men and women—who are people that at the very end of the day love Christ and they exhibit that. They would be men and women of the Word, men and women of prayer, men and women of the gospel, all as a pattern of life in ministry. Thank you so much for the conversation. You have been so very helpful, Dr. Gaines.

Dr. Gaines: Jesus’ disciples only said to him, teach us one thing, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They did not say teach us to preach, teach us to build great churches or whatever. They said, “Teach us to pray.” What is interesting is that they had just seen him praying, and it comes in Luke 11:1. Do you know what the last few verses of Luke 10 are? It is when Martha and Mary were at their home. Martha was banging the kitchen pans out there and working for Jesus, and Mary was sitting at his feet and listening to his Word. He said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the right thing.” Then, right after he prays, the next verse is Luke 11:1—“Teach us to pray.” And he gives the Lord’s Prayer there as well. I think it is a priority. May we all make it our priority.

Dr. Allen: Amen. Thank you, brother, for sharing that with us.

Dr. Gaines: Thank you.

*Recorded 28 January 2014 in the Spurgeon Room

Dr. Allen: Dr. Smith, it is a joy to welcome you to the campus of Midwestern Seminary today. We are in the Spurgeon Room today, in the President’s home, the Vivion Home, here on campus. It is a joy to have you here to talk about topics that are of interest to us. Most especially, we want to talk about preaching. For many years, you have taught preaching at Southwestern Seminary, and you serve currently as vice president for Communications and Student Services there as well. You are a person whom I know has given much thought and written much on the topic of preaching. It is fun to have this conversation with you—a conversation that you and I may be having in any setting, as we have on a number of occasions, but to have it in this setting with an audience to listen in and hear what we talk about. It is a joy to have you here in the Spurgeon Room. We are surrounded by some of Spurgeon’s books and Spurgeon’s desk. It is the right time and place to talk about preaching with a man who loves preaching.

I want to draw the conversation specifically to the topic of expository preaching. Now, you and I have talked before about the fact that seemingly everyone is an expositor. I am yet to meet anyone that consciously denied themselves as an expositor. So, begin with how you define expository preaching.

Dr. Smith: It is an elastic term. It is most foundational. It comes from the Latin to “ex out the positive truth.” So, it is to remove a positive truth and give it to someone. One of my favorite definitions of expository preaching is Dr. [Paige] Patterson’s—my boss, the president at Southwestern—which is simply to teach people to read Scripture. I love that because it has another function besides talking. You are actually teaching people their own hermeneutics—teaching them how to interpret a text.

Because exposition is such an elastic term, as I mentioned today in the Hester Lectures [at Midwestern Seminary], we at Southwestern—it is not original of us—have used the term “text-driven preaching.” What we mean by that and the working definition I use in class, is a text-driven sermon is one in which the interpretation and communication of a biblical text that mirrors the substance, structure, and spirit of the text. You are interpreting it, and you are communicating it. When you communicate it, I believe that the actual “how” is not arbitrary. We can talk more about that, but it flies in the face of a lot of what we hear today: “Yes, I believe the Bible. We just need to find another means to communicate it.” Yet, there is so much meaning at the structural level. There is so much meaning at the genre that you cannot have an arbitrary means of communication. That substance, structure and spirit has to mirror what is going on in the text.

Dr. Allen: When you think about expositional preaching—expository preaching—and you have already alluded to this, but define that, especially in contrast with other counterfeits of exposition or other modes or styles of preaching that may rub up against it, but they may not be classical exposition.

Dr. Smith: Today, we talked about three different philosophies of preaching. One is topical preaching, which can be good or bad. You are essentially taking a topic and saying, “Here is what Scripture says about this topic.”

Another one, to coin a phrase, is “text-centered” preaching. The reason I like using the phrase “text-centered” is because I think a lot of what goes under the name of exposition is not really “ex-ing out a positive truth,” but people think it is exposition because they may sound like an expositor stylistically, and they build that sermon around one text. However, it is possible to have one single text, never leave that text, extract all your points from that text, but miss the point of a text. Theoretically, you could preach through a book of the Bible and never get to the point of each individual unit of thought. This is why I do not like the phrase, “verse-by-verse exposition.” I understand what somebody means by that, but the verses, of course, are not in the original languages. Those are important, but they are inventions of later times. We are trying to grasp the meaning and units of thought in the text.

Dr. Allen: Absolutely. To pick up on the phrase “verse-by-verse exposition,” I use that oftentimes in reference to exposition–and I mean that in the good way–but for many people that are doing verse-by-verse exposition, really what they are doing is just a series of topical sermons based upon pre-assigned texts. It just so happens the pre-assigned texts are the ones they are following through in a book of the Bible or a passage of Scripture. But if you are avoiding or not giving due consideration to the canonical context, to the particular book’s context—what is going on before and after—you are undermining your whole argument for expository preaching.

Dr. Smith: That is exactly right. There is another one that I did not mention today, and this is tenuous to talk because it may be misunderstood, but it is perfect for our discussion here. “Theological exposition” is really gaining ground today. What I mean by that is what was taught by William Perkins, probably the most influential Puritan homiletician and was influential perhaps mostly on Jonathan Edwards. He went through Solomon Stoddard down to Edwards.

Yale released two years ago the first volume of Edwards’ sermons that have been translated. It was 19 sermons on one parable. As you read through Edwards’ sermons, it is just incredible. Rarely does he deal with the point of that parable. What he would do, following the Puritan plain style, is extract the text, deal with the text, and—reading these sermons—he would never refer back to the text after the first five minutes. He would extract a doctrine from the text and, the rest of the sermon was an exposition on that doctrine. Why could he do that? He was Jonathan Edwards. He just had this veracious mind that was incredible. However, I do not think it is an imitable practice from someone who wants to, over a period of time, give people a swath of Scripture because we do not have access to his mind and that giftedness. There is, I think, a growing number of people who are extracting doctrines from a text and preaching that doctrine, but sitting under that for 20 years I think would keep people from seeing the overarching canonical flow of the grand narrative of Scripture because they have been taught doctrines, not texts.

Dr. Allen: Absolutely. There is a certain appeal to that, especially if you are a theologically-minded person. There are times when we need to camp out on a particular doctrine and hammer it out and explain and defend it, especially in this age when we pastor churches and preach to parishioners who very often are ill-equipped and ill-informed theologically. At the same time, though, if you do that and make it a mode of preaching, you are certainly strained for exposition, and you may be informing your folks of doctrine, but you are not teaching them how to study the Bible. You are not teaching them how to read the Bible, and you are not bringing that full scriptural diet to bear.

Dr. Smith: That is a great way of saying it. I love theology. I love doctrine. But that approach has a tendency to reduce individual texts of Scripture to propositions in which, actually, these are fully orbed pieces of literature. I am picking on the Puritans. The Puritans are amazing, but this is why they were so forcibly allegorical in their approaches to wisdom literature, because you had to find a way to reduce these propositions. Well, wisdom literature is incredible. Proverbs are incredible; Psalms are incredible. In a purely text-driven approach, you can allow the genre to breathe. Let it be itself. Let the text do what it was intended to do. Appreciate the literature of it and the communication of it.

Dr. Allen: Very good. When we are thinking about exposition, oftentimes in the poplar mind, there is this strong correlation between something being thought of as being expository and there being a tightly defined, and often alliterative, outline. So, a ton of time and energy goes into having this spit-shined outline. I know what you are going to say to this because we have talked about some of these things in different settings, but I think it is helpful to get it down here. Talk about the role of the outline and how much energy a preacher should expend on the outline, and how that is or is not reflective of an expository sermon.

Dr. Smith: When I first began to preach, the outline defined the sermon. The question was not, “Do you have a text?” The question was, “Do you have an outline?” In the circles that I ran in, that was the most important thing. What we are suggesting by text-driven sermons is that I decide what type of outline this sermon is going to have because every sermon will have an outline, but I make that decision upon what is going on in the text. There is no one template by which you preach a parable. Take Matthew 13:52. It is a one-sentence parable. That is it. But take Luke 16, The Rich Man and Lazarus, or Luke 15, The Prodigal Son. These are huge, fully-orbed settings with characters, scenes, and all of these types of things.

So, the outline that I choose is going to simply be buoyant. It is going to come up from the text. If I am preaching a parable and it has three major scenes and Jesus teaches something at the end, that is what I do. If it is an Old Testament narrative that has four major movements, I just preach those movements. If it is out of the Apocalyptic literature, where there is just a description of something coming in, then that is my sermon. It is just incredibly liberating. The temptation is to not think of exposition as a philosophy but to think of it as a style. If it is just a style, then I sound like the style of an expositor. I think sometimes we attempt to sound like the style of an expositor only to neglect what the text is really saying.

Dr. Allen: That is very well said. Oftentimes, when a person is so inclined to have an outline and spend so much energy seeking to force or inflict an outline or certain structure on a passage, it actually is counterproductive. Not only may you be undermining the revealing of the passage and the meaning of the passage, but oftentimes outlines become very generic. If you are always trying to get at a proclamation, documentation, and exhortation or the person, the plan, the plea, them these outlines are sounding very generic. It is really not even helping to illumine the text.

We are in the Spurgeon Room and as I sit here I am mindful of a picture to my right of Stephen Olford, who is one of my heroes in preaching. He and Mrs. Heather, who recently passed away as well, were very kind to me and my wife when we were engaged and newlyweds. We had occasion to visit with them several times in Memphis. He was just an incredible preacher. He is one of my favorite preachers who has ever lived. But if I would offer one slight word of criticism—I want to put an asterisks by the word “criticism” because who am I to criticize him?– he was so dependent upon that sermon outline. The points of the outline would always alliterate, the sub-points would alliterate, and he would always emphatically say, “You should never force alliteration on a passage to get the outline.” He believed that, and I believe that he believed that. But there is no way you get all of this alliteration all the time without somewhere rounding an edge.

It took me a while as a preacher to work through that and to reassess the role of the outline. I have an article up on my website about the five ways my preaching has changed. One of the leading ways it has changed over the years is a whole reassessing and appropriating of the sermon outline.

Dr. Smith: Maybe one positive spin to put on it—you think of our Southern Baptist heritage, and there was a time when the young up-and-coming guys were looking for models of preaching and wherever they were not getting it, they were getting it in a Stephen Olford. I think of it like a 12-year-old who is learning a golf swing. He learns the fundamentals of that; he imitates; he only learns through imitation; but ultimately, he has to tweak it to fit what is most effective. When you learn from a master like that, there has to be a point where you keep the spirit of that and deviate from the style and start doing what is faithful to the text, even if it may break down the style that was once so attractive.

Dr. Allen: That is good. That is a very insightful point to make. I tell our students here, listen to a lot of good preachers. If you listen to one preacher, you will find yourself sounding a lot like that preacher. So if you only listen to John MacArthur, you are going to be preaching a whole lot of sermons with a lot of content that he can do exceptionally well, but you may not do so well. If you only listen to Alistair Begg, you are going to be developing a Scottish accent before you know it. If you listen to two preachers, you will likely be very conflicted because you are not going to know who you are. Who do you preach like? But if you listen to seven or eight, that will probably help round you out and inform you.

To this day, I am a seminary president, you are an executive cabinet member at Southwestern Seminary, you teach preaching, and I teach preaching, I have never outgrown and will never outgrow the joy and benefit of listening to great preaching. My wife will come down in the morning or late at night, and I will be getting dressed or shaving or sorting files and there will be sermons playing. Our kids know voices, and they can walk through my office and they will hear W.A. Criswell’s voice, Adrian Rogers’ voice, John MacArthur’s voice, John Piper’s voice, and so many others playing.

In talking about expository preaching, we have talked about the “what.” I want to shift gears and ask you the “why.” If you were to give a very quick defense or apologetic of exposition, what would it be? Why expository preaching?

Dr. Smith: I would turn to Colossians 15a: “Christ is the image—the eikon, the exact representation—of the Father. He is the image of the invisible God.” It is repeated in 2 Corinthians 4 as the image of the invisible. Christ exactly represented what the Father has to say; and in a perfect way, the Scripture represents what Christ has to say, all to get to the people. There is an exact representation of the Father in the Son and an exact representation of the Son in the Word. I have no other ambition than to represent—in the same way to God’s people–what God has said perfectly in his word.

Dr. Allen: Very well said. It is the whole notion of exposing God’s people to that truth and to God’s Son as you just said. I think this case—of course I may be partial—is a slam dunk case, especially the philosophical commitment to biblical exposition. The way that fleshes itself out may vary from location to location, and whether it is John MacArthur with a more deliberate verse-by-verse, or more of a Mark Dever style of exposition that is more paragraph-by-paragraph of larger sections. I can be very happy and live with both of those. There is a fundamental commitment to bringing God’s word to bear.

Dr. Smith: What a theology of preaching does for me–that I love–is it protects me from having to defend exposition from a Scripture. I had a student say to me, “What verse in the Bible tells us we have to do exposition?” That is a great question. I do not think there is one. I am not getting my responsibility to do exposition from one verse. I am getting it from answering this question: “Is it the pastor’s responsibility to teach people Scripture based upon how God has revealed himself?” If the answer is yes, then I can figure out how. For me, text-driven preaching is the most faithful way to do what God has called me to do. If there is another way, I would do that. It is just a method to be obedient to that call.

Dr. Allen: Yes. One of the beauties of exposition is, when rightly done, it leads people back to God’s Word. Everything about this should not only be bringing God’s Word to bear, but teaching people by how you handle the text, how you respect the text, how you explain the text, and how you apply the text. All of that is bringing God’s people into engagement with that passage.

I had a conversation a good while back with a gentleman who was complaining about expository preaching. He said to me, “I don’t understand all of this emphasis on expository preaching, and I do not believe in expository preaching.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I do not like where it leads.” I said, “You do not like where expository preaching leads?” He said, “No, I do not.” I said, “Where does it lead?” He said, “Expository preaching seems to lead to Reformed Theology, so I do not believe in expository preaching.” I laughed out loud. I said, “The point of exposition is that it should lead wherever it leads. Whether it is some theological system you don’t like, dispensationalism or whatever the “ism” is that you do not like, that is another conversation. But do not throw out the baby with the bath water because you do not like that in some people’s exposition it leads them to some system of theology. That is a flawed approach. The whole point is, if rightly done and well done, it is leading people back to Christ, back to the text, back to God’s revelation.

I have one other question as we are thinking of exposition. We have talked about the “what” and the “why.” Just briefly mention the “how.” We cannot do a preaching lab here in the few moments we have left, but give some broad suggestions, broad thematic words of encouragement, that you would say to people to help be an expositor.

Dr. Smith: If I had to isolate one thing, when I was a pastor and began to think more intentionally about preaching and starting to teach it, my one thought in going to the text was, “What is the idea in this text?” I have to extract the big idea. What is the driving idea? Then I would try to find the structure that supported that idea, and I became liberated in a lot of ways when I inverted that process.

The first question for me is, “What is the structure?” When the structure becomes buoyant, when it comes up to the surface, now I can see what the idea is. The structure supports the idea. What I am trying to do is teach people what God’s Word is saying in a section of Scripture, and I have a secondary goal to teach them how the structure of the text supports that. By doing that, I am protecting my people from false doctrine they are going to hear because they understand how Scripture gets at a certain idea. When I look at the “how,” that has probably been the one thing that has helped me the most in my preaching.

The first thing I do when I start to preach is take the text and just read it, and read it, and read it until the structure becomes clear. Once the structure becomes clear and comes up to the surface, then so much of the rest of the sermon preparation process is natural. It comes out of that semantic structure that is in the text.

Dr. Allen: That is good. I would emphatically agree with what you are saying. For me, every sermon begins with an open New American Standard Bible and a legal pad. I deal with the original languages; I deal with commentaries–popular and critical–I cross-reference. I do a whole lot of things, but I do not know if there is anything more fruitful—not only meaning the final product, but in my own heart and soul—than a legal pad, fountain pen, and open Bible, thinking, thinking, thinking, and reading, reading, reading, drawing conclusions and asking questions. All of those things that seem very elementary, frankly, but that is how that sermon congeals itself in one’s heart. Oftentimes observing that and reading that passage again, and again, and again, and again, the meaning, structure, and some of those things surface themselves and rise out.

Dr. Smith: You have a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis. I am reading Alister McGrath’s biography on him now. He refused a typewriter because he felt like he was student and professor of English literature, and just the noise of the typewriter interrupted the flow of how prose felt when he was writing it and saying it. I have found that before I preach a sermon, I take out a blank sheet of paper. Often it is the backside of printer paper we are no longer using, and I write out my sermon longhand. I prepare a manuscript with a computer using all of the software that I use and all of that, but nothing does more to get into my mind so I can preach without depending on notes than just writing it all out longhand.

Dr. Allen: That is a very good word. I have done that for years. Even as I write, I can hear myself saying it and preaching it. That energy realizes itself on the pen and paper. I can feel myself pressing down harder as I am writing, and it is pulsating through my veins. Preaching is an incredible calling, to think that the Lord has chosen to set apart people—his servants, in Ephesians 4—as gifts to the church to equip the church for faithful ministry. It is an incredible calling we have and an incredible stewardship we have. It is a joy to talk to you about these things here with Spurgeon’s books over our shoulders and seated here within arm’s reach of Spurgeon’s desk and to be in this context.

Dr. Smith: Thank you, Dr. Allen. I have a question for you. Do you mind if I ask you a question?

Dr. Allen: Absolutely.

Dr. Smith: Is it true that the Spurgeon Library here is a lending library?

Dr. Allen: It is not true that it is a lending library.

Dr. Smith: Are you sure?

Dr. Allen: I am positive.

Dr. Smith: So I cannot check something out?

Dr. Allen: No, you can look and you can contemplate thievery, but that comes with a gun shot. Seriously, thank you for being here with us Dr. Smith. It is a joy to have this conversation.

*Recorded 21 January 2014

Statistically, probably a majority of Southern Baptist churches are pastored by a bi-vocational pastor. In the state of Missouri, it is more than 50 percent. In most states, it is more than 50 percent. Out west and up north, high percentages of our pastors are bi-vocational. I will tell you, they are my heroes. Read more

Dr. Allen: Dr. Akin, it is a joy to host you in the Spurgeon Room today. We are on the campus of Midwestern Seminary in the basement of the President’s home, the Vivion Home. We are in the Spurgeon Room, surrounded by Spurgeon’s books and some of Spurgeon’s artifacts. It is a joy to talk about preaching with you today. I want to preface the conversation with you today by simply expressing my appreciation to you for your influence in my preaching. I had you a little over 10 years ago in an M.Div. classroom, learning about preaching. Much of which you said that semester has certainly shaped my understanding of preaching and has stayed with me as I preach.

When I think about the man, Danny Akin, different thoughts come to mind—obviously, seminary president, a heart for the Great Commission, and a loyal and long-time Southern Baptist, but at the very top of that list is a preacher. It is first and foremost “preacher.” Let me begin asking you, autobiographically, to share about what channeled your heart as a young man toward preaching, and what developed this sense of passion in your heart for preaching?

Dr. Akin: I was fortunate, Jason, to have a pastor that was an expositor. I did not really know what it was, but I knew that he worked though books of the Bible and just taught the Bible. In God’s providence, I went to Criswell College and wound up meeting a man named Paige Patterson, who became my homiletics professor. And, of course, Dr. Patterson is well known for his commitment to expository preaching. He taught me many things. One of the things he taught me was that good preachers listen to good preachers, or even great preachers. He gave us a number of men that he thought provided good role models, in particular, John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, Stephen Olford, Adrian Rogers, and Jerry Vines. I began to listen on a regular basis to those men just to learn how they did it, why the way they did it was compelling, [and] also the way they handled the word. I was always fed by their preaching. So, I determined in my own life—taking what limited abilities that I had—to try to likewise follow in their footsteps. Having Paige as a preacher, finding those men as good models, and later being introduced to some of the writings of people like Haddon Robinson, Charles Koehler, and W. A. Criswell, that helped shaped my way of thinking about preaching.

Dr. Allen: You have very helpfully referenced listening to good preachers, and I do that Danny. I encourage my students to do that, and I do it today. I am a seminary president, but I always want to be learning. I always want to be a learner of preaching. If you come in my office in the morning while I am doing some desk work, there will often be sermons playing in the background. Many of the men you mentioned from yesteryear and from the current generation are who I am listening to. Whether it is John MacArthur or Adrian Rogers, who is deceased, or W. A. Criswell, Alistair Begg, Danny Akin, or other young men, you will hear preaching in the background.

Dr. Akin: I do not listen to him much. I cannot handle it.

Dr. Allen: Well, you are like me. I cannot stand to listen to Jason Allen. This saying is not unique to me, but I tell folks—especially interns that I have here—“You want to listen to great preachers. Do not listen to one or you will preach just like him. Do not listen to two or you will be a deeply conflicted person.” Listen to seven, eight, or nine. Cycle through them so that you will develop your own voice, your own style, within the context of exposition, as you learn from these different great preachers.

Dr. Akin: I think you are exactly right. Today, when I am working through a book of the Bible, I try to find five or six men that have worked their way through that particular book. Recently, I want through the gospel of Mark, and I listened to John MacArthur. I listened to Mark Dever, who did a wonderful job of walking through the gospel of Mark. He is a charismatic Calvinist, but Sam Storms—who is not terribly far from here—also had worked his way through Mark, and he is a very good expositor so I listened to him. Those men, along with people like Andy Davis, David Platte, Matt Chandler, Matt Carter, Darrin Patrick, you mentioned Alistair Begg earlier, of course, John Piper—these are men that I try to see if they have worked through a book of the Bible. If they have, I try to listen to them just to learn both how they handle the text, but also their ability to communicate the text.

I say to folks now when I teach preaching, and I may have even said it when you were my student: “What you say is more important than how you say it, but how you say it has never been more important because today we compete with the internet; we compete with podcasts; we compete with radio; and we compete with television. People do not have to listen to bad preaching. It has never been a greater challenge, at least in the Western culture, to be able to say what you say well. I would rather you say something that is meaningful badly, than to say nothing in a very gifted sort of way.” I remember when I was at Southern, Herschel always used to say, “Why does it need to be one or the other? Why can’t we say something good and say it in a good way?” I think that is what we should aspire to do.

Dr. Allen: That is very good. When I was a young man contemplating a call to ministry, wrestling with that, and trying to sense the Lord’s will, I was in college playing basketball, and right across the street from my college was SouthPoint Baptist Church. I would go there on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights because I had practice at 8 a.m. I started going there because I could go from church to practice in two minutes.

I heard a guy preach there named Steve Lawson, whom you know. He is a great expositor. I remember him telling me one time, “Jason, if you like what I am doing, you will really like this.” I said, “What is that?” He told me about two men I had heard of very loosely. He said, “If you like what I am doing in the pulpit, you will really like what Adrian Rogers does, and you will like what John MacArthur does.” He said, “You need to get their sermon tapes.” So I did. I began to get Adrian Rogers’ sermon tapes and John MacArthur’s sermon tapes—I am dating myself using the word “tapes,” but I am going somewhere wit this.

Dr. Akin: Though they are both expositors, they are very different.

Dr. Allen: Exactly—they are very different. But those tapes are like gold to me. I had a couple of buddies, and we were pursuing ministry together. We would get these tapes, and we would share them. We might get crazy and duplicate them. MacArthur had this tape-lending library where you could mail in, get some tapes, have them, and then mail them back. This was like gold. We guarded those things with our lives, and we shared them. And now, with basically any topic under the sun or any text under the sun, you can go to an Adrian Rogers website, John MacArthur website, W. A. Criswell website, or dozens of websites where you can instantaneously download podcasts of these preachers on these texts. Rightly appropriated, that ought to take preaching to a whole new level—a whole new standard of excellence and competence for men in ministry and pursuing ministry these days.

Dr. Akin: I agree, because again, you need to ask yourself the question, “Why is it that thousands of people will, or did, come hear these people week after week after week?” Today, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands listen to them devotedly and faithfully week after week after week. So what is it that John MacArthur does that would cause you to come back again and again? What is it that Jerry Vines does, that John Piper does, that Mark Dever does—and we go on and on—that would cause people to want to listen to them week after week? Again, Jason, anybody can hit a grand slam one time. It is the very gifted man of God that can deliver the goods week after week, and these are men that you would want to listen to week after week. So, I would agree with you that we can learn from them, both in how they handle the text, and also in their delivery.

John MacArthur is not bells and whistles. He is just very faithfully teaching you the Bible for an hour. Adrian Rogers was probably the most gifted orator I have ever heard. You were partly enraptured by the way he did it. So, you could learn from him. You may not have his voice, but the way of turning a phrase—he was so good with little short quips, and there is a two-volume work called Adrianisms of all of these saying of his that were just part and parcel of who he was as a faithful expositor of God’s Word. It made his sermons all the more memorable and easy to recall.

Dr. Allen: Oh, I have five children, and I think I would be willing to give two of them to get his voice in exchange.

Dr. Akin: The first time I heard him I said, “Dear Lord, why did the rest of us get cut out of the will?” What an incredible voice he has. Then my wife one day said, “Yeah, he is also pretty to look at, honey.” I said, “Two strikes, we are done.”

Dr. Allen: That is right—and as someone famously noted—he could stand in the pulpit and say, “Mesopotamia,” and people would come forward. He was just brilliant.

Dr. Akin: That is exactly right.

Dr. Allen: I want to touch on another name you mentioned. It is fun to have this conversation. I love your heart for preaching and getting to engage these things. You talked about Stephen Olford. I did not know who he was until, as a young man in college, I was told of him. I was given his biography, written by John Phillips, and what really struck me then was how the Lord had used him, but also, most immediately in that context, was the notion of biblical courtship. My wife and I applied that. As we were dating, we both read that biography, and we applied that to our lives. Then we had the opportunity to get to know Stephen and Heather Olford in a personal way as newlyweds. They hosted us a couple of different times in Memphis. We got to know them, and they sent us a wedding gift.

At that young age, when you are in your early 20s, pursuing ministry, you are very impressionable, and he made a very deep impression on me. Though, I do not think it is that I was an impressionable man at an impressionable age. It is something much more profound than that. As you look at preachers and listen to twentieth-century preaching, in any estimation, I think you have to put him on the top-ten list of preachers. When you look at what he did with the text, the voice that he could project, the power that he preached with, and—to use an old fashion expression that is relevant and right—the anointing of the Holy Spirit on his life, he was Lloyd-Jones’ theology on fire. To quote what he would say, “Great preaching would make doctrine dance.” He could do that in the way he handled the text. It grieves me as a seminary president to know that he has only been deceased about seven years, and so many people lose memory of people like that. I would love your thoughts—just a word or two of tribute—on Stephen Olford. Do you concur or not concur with my assessment?

Dr. Akin: Oh, I concur 110 percent. Let me work backwards. Ten years ago, the day before I was elected president of Southeastern Seminary, I was at the Olford Institute in Memphis doing a conference with him. I had to leave early on that Tuesday to be in Wake Forrest the next day. He brought me down in front of about 50 people for that particular worship. I got on my knees and he laid hands on me and prayed over me, asking God to bless the ministry at Southeastern. He died the next year. I will never forget that.

The first time I heard him preach I was 20 years old. I still remember. It was I Samuel, chapter 16: “The Sin of Partial Obedience.” Jason, it scared the daylights out of me because in that resonating voice of his, he said, “Partial obedience is complete disobedience.” It just sent chills up and down my spine. Furthermore, I was 20. I was young, like when you first encountered, him and I had never heard anyone preach like that, ever. It was in another category altogether. Immediately, I was attracted to him.

Then—a third thing—I lived in Dallas and went to Southwestern Seminary one way every day for three or four days a week. One particular semester, I sat in the back and took his series on II Corinthians. I listened to it throughout the semester driving back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I want to tell you what, my soul was enriched more that semester by carpooling back and forth listening to him. Not trying to disparage what I got at the seminary, but just listening to him work through II Corinthians was powerful.

So, I agree. I would be willing to come together with some brothers to try to create a website, get his tapes, and have those digitized because as part of the generation that was blessed by him, the next generation is not experiencing that. They do not know who he is, and it is to their great, great, great loss. Just like Dr. Criswell’s legacy is being maintained and Dr. Roger’s legacy is being maintained, I would love to see Dr. Olford’s legacy maintained. I agree, he is at least in the top 10, maybe in the top five, preachers I have heard.

Dr. Allen: This is a man who personally knew Lloyd-Jones very well.

Dr. Akin: He was very close to Billy Graham.

Dr. Allen: That is right, and Billy Graham said in public that no one influenced him in his Christian life more than Stephen Olford.

Dr. Akin: He would sometimes call Stephen and say, “Would you fly up to the crusade? We will take care of it. I just need you to pray with me.” He was that kind of man. He was 5’5”.

Dr. Allen: He was a human dynamo.

Dr. Akin: He was, and Ms. Heather, as you mentioned a moment ago, his lovely wife—what a gracious lady. They were a great team.

Dr. Allen: Absolutely. He was like Whitefield in that wherever he showed up, it was like revival showed up with him. I have seen him preach to thousands, and I have seen him preach in a room of 20, and he does it with the exact same intensity, the exact same passion. You would think it was the most important event taking place in the cosmos that hour. He would show up with that passion and that power. He was just a true gem. You think about the great preachers in London, and you think about the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentiethcentury, and you have a link from Spurgeon, to G. Campbell Morgan, to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, to John Stott and others. Stephen Olford is directly in that lineage without question. Then he came to North America to pastor.

Dr. Akin: He was an “M.K.” wasn’t he?

Dr. Allen: That is right, he was a Missionary Kid. He grew up in Africa and has great stories associated with that. He pastored Duke Street Church in London and outside of London. Then, he came to pastor in New York City. He had a phenomenal ministry there with the launch of Encounter Ministries, and he was just a powerhouse preacher. I hope to resuscitate his reputation and the awareness of his ministry in every appropriate way I can.

Dr. Akin: He told me a funny story. Lloyd-Jones hated to be recorded, and even though there are a number of recordings of Lloyd-Jones, he did not like it. He felt like the preaching moment was something that could not be recaptured. Dr. Olford said he had him when he was in New York at Calvary. Olford said, “He would not let me tape his messages. He was adamant. I was not happy about it, but he would not let me.”

Dr. Allen: He told me a story one time, too. It was just an incredible story—you felt like you were there at Nicea or Chalcedon with these stories he told. It was like you were sitting in on church history. On one occasion, he was sailing across the Atlantic when Martyn Lloyd-Jones had just replaced G. Campbell Morgan. They overlapped a couple of years, with Lloyd-Jones as the teaching associate replacing Campbell Morgan in the early 1940s. He was crossing the Atlantic, Stephen and Heather were on the ship, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones was on the ship with Mrs. Lloyd-Jones. Dr. Olford saw Dr. Lloyd-Jones, on the deck and he went up to him and he said, “Dr. Lloyd-Jones, how are you doing?” He said, “Stephen, my boy, I am doing wonderfully.” He said to Lloyd-Jones, “How is it going at Westminster Chapel?” He said, “It is going marvelously. We are emptying the place.” Young Stephen Olford was perplexed and said, “Come again.” Dr. Lloyd-Jones said, “I said, ‘it is going marvelously, we are emptying the place.’” He said, “Stephen, my boy, before a man can fill a chapel, often he has to empty it first.” It proved true—he emptied it and filled it. You know the great stories there. People would throng to hear him preach. Even as bombs were falling in the Battle of Britain in 1939, they were hearing him preach, and the rest is history.

I want to shift gears here in the context of this conversation and unpack a little bit more about preaching. I want to touch on something that we are not going to give justice given time constraints. It is a big topic that is becoming bigger by the week, and it is an appropriate topic. Not to understate the consequence of it, but I think it is appropriate to call it not only a weighty matter, but a little bit of a fad these days as well, as far as contemporary relevance and interest. That is the whole notion of Christ-centered preaching. You are editor of a commentary series given to Christ-centered preaching. Say a word or two about the movement—if I may call it that—as you see it, and the tributaries leading to that, where it is, and how healthy it is.

Dr. Akin: I think it is a movement. It was something that was not on my radar screen, even as someone devoted to biblical exposition, until probably five or six years ago. I think the tributaries, to my Baptist shame, have to be acknowledged as being in the Presbyterian stream: Bryan Chappell, Sydney Greidanus, Graeme Goldsworthy, Sinclair Ferguson, Dennis Johnson, just to name a few. I sensed something, Jason, when I first got introduced to it. I immediately resonated with it.

Here is why: I had read John 5:39 where Jesus says, “The Scriptures testify of me.” He was clearly talking about the Old Testament. I have read Luke 24, as you have too, where Jesus says, “The law and the Prophets testify of me.” Someone said on one occasion, “If we treat the Old Testament like a Jewish rabbi, then we are not doing faithful Christian preaching.” That convicted me, and I knew intuitively that is true. If we treat the Old Testament like a Jewish rabbi, then we are not treating it as Christian Scripture. All of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is Christian Scripture. Now, does that then mean that we have to surrender to an allegorical hermeneutic? Absolutely not, but we can recognize there are a number of ways, especially through typology, that the Old Testament anticipates and looks forward to Christ.

Someone very influential in my life in this area was my son, Jonathan. Jonathan did his Ph.D. at Southern, took seven years of Greek and seven years of Hebrew. I do not know how, but he got really interested in the writings of Goldsworthy, Greidanus, Ferguson, Chappell, and so on. Ferguson actually says in one of his books that handling the Old Testament well as Christian Scripture becomes a knack—you learn by doing it. Well, Jonathan has that knack, and I would sometimes call him up and say, “I am looking at this text. Tell me how you would preach Christ from this.” He would take about 30 minutes, call me back, and I have to say to you—not because he is my son—he would do it and I would say, “That makes sense.”

Then, we had Sinclair Furguson and Ligon Duncan, whom I love dearly, come to Southeastern a number of years ago and preach out of Numbers 21. He preached it with a Christ-centered hermeneutic, and when he got through, I was looking at myself saying, “How else could you have preached this? Why did I not see this before?”

So, I will be the first to acknowledge that I am still on the way in doing this, and I do not want to jump from one extreme to another and thereby deny the initial historically, grammatically imbedded meaning of the text. I think that is where you start. You always start with, “What did the text mean at that time, at that moment, in that particular context.” But, to quote Paul Harvey, “We want to read that text in light of the rest of the story.” There is one grand author of the Bible—the Holy Spirit. He knew where the story was going. He knew how the little stories anticipate the big story that is coming on. That is what I am working through now. I am learning, and we are not there.

Again, Jonathan told me he had dinner with Graeme Goldsworthy while at Southern, and he asked Goldsworthy how he would preach a Christ-centered message from the book of Proverbs. Goldsworthy said, “I do not know. I have never done it.” He said, “Wait, you have this method.” Goldsworthy said, “Well, I have not seen how I could apply it to Proverbs yet,” which is a little deflating, because if it is a valid model, it will apply to everything. I think there is still a sense in which we are developing this, but I think we have to acknowledge that you honor the historical, grammatical meaning, but you do not preach the Old Testament like a Jewish rabbi because it is Christian Scripture.

Dr. Allen: That is very well put.

Dr. Akin: There is a balance, and we are not sure exactly where that is, but we are working on it and I think that is good.

Dr. Allen: The way I synthesize it in my mind in one sentence is this—I know I am very comfortable with this sentence—Christ should be, can be, and must be preached from every text from Genesis to Revelation. I am not ready to say that Christ is locatable in every text. Does that make sense?

Dr. Akin: Yes.

Dr. Allen: I think there is some distinction there. By that, I mean some guys—not to get too analytical or too critical—take the ethos of Christ-centered preaching, they believe it, as do I—I wrote my dissertation on aspects of that—and they will run too quickly and feel like, “How do I do this?” It makes them perhaps a bit into—I do not say this pejoratively—the extremes of typology.

Dr. Akin: Yes, which almost becomes allegorical and spiritualizing.

Dr. Allen: Absolutely, and here is the thing—if you read Greidanus’ work, especially—many men have been helpful as you have referenced, but Greidanus’ book is uniquely helpful because he has his seven ways. Those are eminently helpful and applicable. I am wrestling with how to do this faithfully from Genesis to Revelation, bringing Christ to bear as a preacher of Christ. Our impulse, as it ought to be, is to begin and end sermons with Christ. We are in the Spurgeon Room, and we have the collective works of Spurgeon around us. I have challenged students and friends, and said, “You can pull any of these volumes off the shelf and turn to the last page of any sermon in these books, and you will find those sermons ending with Christ.”

Dr. Akin: He makes a beeline to the cross.

Dr. Allen: Of course, his famous statement is that he will make a beeline to the cross.

Dr. Akin: I think, Jason, he is somewhat of a model to show us how we can do it legitimately and authentically. He did. He gave us a good model. I think the other thing I would say is that we can learn through two avenues. One, read the sermons in Acts [and] read the book of Hebrews, because I think the book of Hebrews actually is a collection of sermon outlines. Look at how those work.

Then, look at how the early fathers—before they got seduced by allegory—look at how the earliest fathers handled the Old Testament. I think you have some guidelines there because they are the closest to it. We can at least glean from them and apply the things we have learned through the historical-grammatical Chrysostom Antioch School. Our feet stay grounded there, but we can see the advantages that Patristics, Hebrews, and Acts demonstrate for us, and honor what Christ said in John, chapter five and Luke, chapter 24: that in some way, the Scriptures are waiting, anticipating, and looking forward to him. The only time allegory is ever used in the New Testament is in Galatians 4:21–31, and Paul tells you, “I am doing an allegory.” Which, by the way, he says, “I am not in favor of this, and I do not usually do this.” So, if he tells you it that plainly, you probably ought to learn from the apostle there.

Dr. Allen: That is good. That is very helpful. Again, I encourage folks that the greatest champions of Christ-centered preaching—Bryan Chapell, Sydney Greidanus, all of these guys—understand and acknowledge this does not mean that you have to extrapolate Christ. You have these ways that are legitimate and right. I say, let’s do it aggressively, faithfully every week, but do not feel like that necessitates over-torqueing typology that may well become allegory.

Dr. Akin: I agree.

Dr. Allen: This has been a very helpful conversation. It has been fun to reminisce about preachers and talk about perhaps the most pressing issue on the preaching landscape today—Christ-centered preaching. You are a man eminently qualified to speak to this. You train preachers, are a preacher, love preaching, and you have taught preaching for over 20 years. Thank you for having this conversation.

*Recorded in the Spurgeon Room on 23 October, 2013

Audio:

Transcript:

Dr. Allen:

Dr. Hawkins, it is a joy to welcome you to the campus of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary today. You have already served us richly by preaching to our chapel community. Thank you so much for your friendship and for being here and ministering God’s Word to us. It is a particular joy of mine to host you in the President’s home—the Vivion Home, in the Spurgeon Room where we are surrounded by some of C. H. Spurgeon’s books and artifacts. It is a special joy because I know of your appreciation for Spurgeon, and W. A. Criswell’s appreciation for Spurgeon, who was a mentor to you. Criswell is one that our denomination looked to for decades for leadership, but has now been gone to be with the Lord for a little over 10 years.

Today in the conversation, I want to revisit W. A. Criswell. I feel a certain stewardship, as a seminary president, to make sure the young men we train for pastoral ministry—for the preaching task—not only know the great preachers of today, but they know the great preachers of yesterday. It is really impossible to think of twentieth-century Southern Baptist life, and even twentieth-century life within the broader Evangelical Movement without thinking of W. A. Criswell.

It is a joy to have you here. You knew him like few others did. Let me begin the conversation by asking you, how did you come to know W. A. Criswell in the first place?

Dr. Hawkins:

My pastor that led me to Christ and Dr. Criswell were good friends. They were life-long friends. I actually came to know him very personally when I was in my 30s and I was pastor of First Baptist Ft. Lauderdale. The church had seen some spiritual success and growth. He took me under his wing and he became like a father to me. We vacationed together in the summers, Susan and I did with Dr. and Mrs. Criswell. We spent time in Europe with them; we spent time in New York. They were into antiques, which we were not, but we always enjoyed spending one week a year with them. For many, many years he was like a father to me.

Dr. Allen:

You had the opportunity to be one of his successors at First Baptist Dallas for about five years before going to your current post as president of GuideStone. Talk about Criswell, the preacher. There are many ways to think of him: Criswell the pastor; Criswell this Titanic figure, something of an institution in and of himself. But as I look at Criswell from a distance, I find it difficult to reduce him beyond the pulpit. That is, first and foremost, who he was. Talk about Criswell, the preacher.

Dr. Hawkins:

Sitting here, looking at this portrait of Spurgeon reminds me that he really had no real peer in his heyday. People today need to know that neither did Dr. Criswell—I am talking about in the prime of the ministry he received from the Lord. He was an unusual man. He was brilliant. He earned a Ph.D. from Southern when few people were doing that. I always thought if he had gone into politics, he would have definitely been a senator, probably president. If he had gone into law, he would have been a Supreme Court justice. If he had gone into business, he would have built a Fortune 500 company.

Fortunately, for us in the evangelical world, God called him into ministry. He was a preacher par excellence. He was a student of both of the languages. He could speak to you and talk to you on any subject, whether it be Greek mythology, history, anything. He had a brilliant mind, and yet, he preached a gospel that could be understood by everyone. Fortunately, he has left us a lot of books to remember this brilliance.

It seemed like every time, in Southern Baptist life at least, that there came a crisis moment, there would come a book from Dr. Criswell. I remember when the evolution issue became a big thing among some seminary professors in Southern Baptist life. Dr. Criswell wrote, Did Man Just Happen? When the Charismatic Movement began to take hold in Southern Baptist life, it was really charismania, and there came the book, The Holy Spirit in Today’s World. Even foreseeing the battle for the Bible that the Southern Baptists went through in the late 70s and 80s, Dr. Criswell gave us, Why I Preach the Bible as Literally True.

His books, his writings, and today, like Abel, being dead, still speaks through www.wacriswell.com, which has over 4,000 of his sermons. Unlike Spurgeon—we are here in the Spurgeon library—if we want to read Spurgeon, we can only do it linearly. We can only read what he wrote. On www.wacriswell.com, there are 4,000 of his manuscript messages alongside his handwritten notes, alongside audio, and alongside video. We not only get to read what he said, but we can hear and watch the pathos in his voice—the passion in his life—as he delivered his messages.

In answer to your question, he really had no peer. He was very respectful of his predecessor. Dr. George W. Truett was a life figure. It is hard for preachers today to believe the significance and platform that Truett had. You go to Dallas today and there is Truett Hospital, a part of Baylor Hospital. There is Truett Elementary School. There are edifices all over the city of Dallas named after this preacher of First Baptist, George W. Truett. He pastored there for 47½ years.

Criswell also was a bit taken with Dr. J. Frank Norris, who also was a graduate of Southern and the pastor of First Baptist Fort Worth. Many people do not know, but it was the largest church in the world in the 20s and 30s. He ran multiple thousands of people, Morris did. He was a fire-branded Fundamentalist. They both morphed into Criswell. Criswell came in 1944 to succeed Dr. Truett, just months after Truett’s death. He took the Fundamentalist, fire-brand passion and eschatology of Norris, coupled it with the statesmanship, polish, and being a builder of this instead of a tearer of things down that Truett had. He put both of them in a unique package that really changed evangelical thought in the world for those years.

Dr. Allen:

When you think about that run First Baptist Dallas had, basically for a century it had two pastors: George W. Truett and W. A. Criswell. To think of a multi-decade long pastorate, nearly a half-century pastorate for Truett, and depending on when you actually peg Dr. Criswell’s retirement date, perhaps even over a half-century.

Dr. Hawkins:

I say Truett was there 47½ and Criswell was there 50, but I am a little partial.

Dr. Allen:

There you have it. Talk about what kept him in that pulpit week after week, year after year, decade after decade, being faithful and preaching away.

Dr. Hawkins:

Number one, the man was like Nathanael—he was without guile. It never entered his mind that anyone would have an evil thought toward him or anything else. He was the purest-minded man I have ever known. He was passionately in love with the Lord Jesus Christ, and he loved the Word of God. He gave his morning—all of them—to the study of the text in Greek and in Hebrew, both of which he was proficient in. So much of his preaching issued out of that.

What other people do not realize, though, is that he was not just a great preacher, though he was. I will speak in a moment about what I think is the hinge on Southern Baptist life in the twentieth century that he preached. People know him as a great preacher, but few know that he was an unbelievable pastor. He loved his people. He visited them. He wept with them. He cried with them. And they knew he loved them. One of the reasons he had such incredible unanimity and 100 percent following and support in the church for decades was because they knew that he loved them.

A lot of people remember him, as you said, as a preacher and a lot of people remember him as a theologian, writer, or builder—Criswell College is named after him. I remember him in his pajamas on Saturday nights over on Swiss Avenue at the parsonage when I would go back in the back door. He would be in his study, and I would go over what I was going to preach the next Sunday and before I left we would kneel there at that couch, and he would put his hands on me and pray for me. I remember visiting hospitals with him. I remember him holding the hands of people dying— that he had pastored for decades—and standing there with tears streaming down his cheeks singing, “I Feel Like Traveling Home.” He was singing to people as they died, weeping. I remember him in restaurants. When we would get up to leave when we were finished eating, we would look around and he would be back thanking the busboy for serving him. He was a man of detail. He was a man who loved people, regardless of who they were or what walk of life they came from.

Dr. Allen:

That is very encouraging to hear the way he so channeled his heart for ministry, even to the least of these. Circling back around to his pulpit ministry, I know John MacArthur, whom we had on campus here recently, has referenced the fact that when he went to Grace Community Church in 1969, Criswell was one of the very few models of exposition out there that he could look to. In some ways, you think of Criswell channeling different tributaries, whether it is the Conservative Movement and Resurgence in our denomination, or more broadly speaking of the church at large. He was championing and modeling expository preaching. Talk about that style of preaching that he practiced and his convictions about it.

Dr. Hawkins:

He was doing this in a time that few people were. He was doing this in a time where some people were writing series of sermon books called Simple Sermons (Herschel Ford). Not taking anything away from Dr. Ford, but Dr. Criswell was far more into the Word of God. As you know, one of his most famous sermons was preached on a New Year’s Eve in Dallas, when he started preaching at 7 p.m. It became the book, The Scarlet Thread Through the Bible. He preached hours into the night, through the morning, tracing the scarlet thread from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21—all through the Word of God. He is known as a Bible preacher.

I suppose you would have to see the church from the inside to see the brilliance of this man because his genius was not only in the pulpit, though it was the strongest pulpit in twentieth-century America, in my opinion. His genius was also in organization and the way he led the church. For example, he was such a visionary. He changed Sunday school from what he would call a “vertical organization,” to a “horizontal organization.” First Baptist Dallas was the first Sunday school to age group itself on a horizontal level to reach more families. He caught onto family ministry before anybody else did. He built a building which had a bowling alley and gymnasium before any church ever had a gymnasium or bowling alley or anything to reach families.

Ironically, he was like Jesus in two particular ways. Jesus attracted women to him that served in ministry, and he attracted reprobates. Criswell did the same thing. He attracted both of those types of folks. God brought three women along that really built First Baptist Church along with W. A. Criswell. Minnie Slaughter Veal, whose father, Col. Slaughter, was the founder of Baylor Hospital, and many things in the early days in Dallas and he was a deacon at First Baptist. Minnie Slaughter Veal inherited much of his wealth, and to this day, the trust at First Baptist Dallas still funds choir mission trips and things like that.

There came a time when Dr. Criswell wanted to buy the First Christian Church, which became available across the street from the church to expand. The deacons voted him down, and he was sad about it. The next day, Ms. Veal called him—I am going back into the late 40s, early 50s—and she said, “Preacher, I hear you are sad,” and he told her what had happened. Before long, there was a “For Sale” sign on the Christian Church property. Dr. Criswell told her that he had a dream of building a family center over there with bowling alleys, gymnasiums, a parking garage, and things to reach families. Before anyone knew it, there started a demolition on the church property. After it had been bought, it was demolished. Then, steel started coming up out of the ground, and all of the sudden a big building about 10 stories high went up. It was finished, and Ms. Veal went over and handed him the keys to the Veal Building. That is how some of the things took place in Dallas.

Dr. Allen:

That is how you build a church.

Dr. Hawkins:

Then, Mary Crowley, who built a company called Home Interiors, was on Billy Graham’s board for years, and she came to know the Lord there in the church. She was a great benefactor to all of the ministers of the church. Then, from the Hunt family was Ruth Hunt. Those three good, godly women had tremendous wealth and used it for the cause of Christ to help build the church.

Dr. Allen:

That is a unique story and narrative for you to weave. Not only as rendering on history, but as one who has lived it himself as a pastor. There is a unique, providential confluence of a great man, uniquely gifted, incredibly devoted, personally sacrificial, in a city that is dynamic and growing within a broader region of resources, with different strong personalities and people with resources in the church. One, plus one, plus one, plus one, equals 10. These things come together in a unique way to expand the kingdom. As far as Dr. Criswell goes, it is hard to have a conversation about him without people sharing stories about some of his eccentricities. It is not uncommon for a uniquely gifted person and a great leader to have his own eccentricities, whether it is Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, or in the church realm, W. A. Criswell. Share some of the stories about Criswell which demonstrate his personal eccentricities.

Dr. Hawkins:

He definitely had them. I shared thousands of meals with him over 25 years. Then, when I was pastor, we would eat some meal together every day. I do not think I ever ate a meal with Dr. Criswell that he did not eat off of my plate, or anyone else’s plate that was there. What he would do is he would stare at your plate for a minute, and you knew he was coming. One Christmas, Susie gave him a fork that had a long extension on it. That was one of his more strange mannerisms. He had a lot of things like that. He did not eat chicken because when he was growing up, he ate so much chicken that he no longer could.

I think one of the most interesting vignettes is what happened shortly after he came to Dallas in 1944. There are three things that symbolized Dr. Criswell: his name was synonymous with the Bible, his books, and the blessed hope. He was a premillennialist. He loved eschatology until his dying day. He lived believing in the blessed hope. Truett did not preach expositionally. He had a great voice which carried him. He never gestured. He stood in the pulpit, read the text, and preached his sermon as a great, stately man. His voice and his presence carried the room. Criswell was running from one end of the platform to the other. He was expository, passionate, and fiery. He was a premillennialist and Truett was not.

Criswell had been there about a year, and he decided that they needed to change the Articles of Faith of the church. He wrote into the Articles of Faith a strong eschatological statement that related to premillennialism. When it was brought before the deacons, more than one of the deacons had concerns about Truett not believing that—you have to understand, in those days Truett was greatly revered. One of the deacons stood up and said, “Dr. Criswell, the great George W. Truett pastored 47½ years in this church, and he could not sign those Articles of Faith. Criswell looked at him, smiled, and said, “You are correct, he couldn’t, but he could now and he would now.” He had a winsome way about defusing circumstances and situations that went along like that.

If I had to pick one verse that I think epitomizes Criswell, it would be 2 Kings 23:25. It is said of the good king Josiah that before him there was not a king like him who loved the Lord with all of his heart, and after him did not arise one like him. To me, that is W. A. Criswell. I do not know of anyone before him who really had the complete package, who loved God, was so greatly used, was dynamic, and was such a brilliant theological mind and passionate evangelical heart. He went all over the world every summer on a mission trip for a month. He had a plane crash in the jungles of South America one time. He went to the out-of-the-way places to preach the gospel to hidden tribes. He loved lost people. He was brilliant in mind, he was passionate in heart, and he was benevolent in hand. There are hundreds of ministries that became Christ’s hand extended to those in the city of Dallas and far beyond it who had nothing and needed something.

Dr. Allen:

That is an appropriate place to wind down the conversation. You have spoken so insightfully into the man, and into the ministry. What a fitting person for us to remember and consider. Dr. Hawkins, would you like to tie up the conversation?

Dr. Hawkins:

I would just tie it up by saying this—all of us have read Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, that great devotional book. In there, Oswald Chambers says that giants dwindle into ordinary men when you really get to know them. I would say that Oswald Chambers never met W. A. Criswell.

Dr. Allen:

Wow. What a fitting way to end. You knew him well, and you can bear testimony to that assessment perhaps like few others. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the conversation. It is a joy to host you on campus, and a joy to reflect and celebrate the life and legacy of W. A. Criswell.

*Recorded in the Spurgeon Room on November 20, 2013